Defining your module

To have your module build, you need to start with writing a modulemd file which is a definition of your module including the components, API, and all the information necessary to build your module like specifying the build root and a build order for the packages. Let’s have a look at an example Vim module:

To build your own module, you need to create a Git repository with the modulemd file. The name of your repo and the file must match the name of your module:

$ mkdir my-module
$ touch my-module/my-module.yml

The core idea about modules is that they include all the dependencies in themselves. Well, except the base packages found in the Base Runtime API – which haven’t been defined yet. But don’t worry, you can use this list of binary packages in the meantime.

So the components list in your modulemd need to include all the dependencies except the ones mentioned above. You can get a list of recursive dependencies for any package by using repoquery:

$ repoquery --requires --recursive --resolve PACKAGE_NAME

When you have this ready, you can start with building your module.

Building your module

To build a modulemd, you need to have the Module Build Service installed on your system. There are two ways of achieving that:

An output will be a yum/dnf repository in the patch you have specified.

What’s next?

The next step would be installing your module on the Base Runtime and testing if it works. But as we are doing this pretty early, there is no Base Runtime at the moment I’m writing this. However, you can try your module in a container using a pre-build fake Base Runtime image.

To handcraft your modular container, please follow the Developing and Building Modules guide on our wiki which provides you all the necessary steps while showing you a way how modular containers might be built in the future infrastructure!

DevConf.cz 2017

Are you visiting DevConf.cz in Brno? There is a talk about Modularity and a workshop where you can try building your own module as well. Both can be found in the DevConf.cz 2017 Schedule.